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Life & Times Transcript

2/22/07

Val Zavala>> Tonight on Life and Times --

He proved he can draw a crowd, but will Barack Obama prove to be a viable candidate?

Joe Cerrell>> The weaknesses will be two years in the United States Senate, but again, there'll be those who say, "Oh, he's not one of those tired old politicians."

Barack Obama>> "It's true that I've only been in Washington for a little while, but I've been in Washington long enough to know it needs to change. I know that."

Val Zavala>> And then, it's a grand proposal, but is the makeover of downtown Los Angeles riding on the backs of taxpayers?

It's all straight ahead on tonight's Life and Times.

Announcer>> Life and Times is made possible through the generous support of the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of medicine, health, science and education.

And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg.

Val Zavala>> He's been called a political rock star. Senator Barack Obama has made his first public appearance in southern California, but how will the senator from Illinois connect with southern Californians, African Americans and, of course, Hollywood? Roger Cooper has this report.

Barack Obama>> "I stand before you today to announce my candidacy for President of the United States of America."

Roger Cooper>> The presidential campaign that Senator Barack Obama launched in the bitter cold of Springfield, Illinois has reached a warmer climate.

[Film Clip]

Roger Cooper>> Obama made his first public west coast campaign stop California with a Los Angeles rally in Crenshaw.

Barack Obama>> "A week ago, I was standing in front of the old State Capital in Springfield, Illinois and I was joined by about seventeen thousand of my closest friends and about five hundred of the media and I announced that I was running for the presidency of the United States of America. I have to tell you that it was a lot colder than it is here."

Roger Cooper>> But how will Obama, a Democrat, play in California, a state that elected Republican governors like Schwarzenegger and Ronald Reagan? We put those questions to two savvy Los Angeles political observers.

Joe Cerrell>> "That's impressive, yeah. There's a really good story actually. It features his wife more prominently there."

Roger Cooper>> Joe Cerrell of Cerrell Associates has worked on numerous presidential campaigns for four decades. And Kerman Maddox keeps close tabs on the pulse of politics at Dakota Communications.

Kerman Maddox>> It's the only campaign, Val, that's generating genuine excitement and enthusiasm. When he announced in Springfield, Illinois last weekend, fifteen degrees, twenty thousand people there. You can't fake that.

Joe Cerrell>> There's a lot to be said for the excitement of a new face, a fresh face, around. You've got a rock star on your hands now.

Kerman Maddox>> Oh, he clearly is being treated like a rock star and I expect that he's going to do well in California.

Barack Obama>> "Are we in a moment right now where potentially we cannot just win an election, but we can transform a country? And the answer is yes. The answer is yes, we can transform a country right here and right now. We've got a window to make a change."

Roger Cooper>> When it comes to weaknesses, both our observers think the biggest question Obama will have to overcome with voters is his limited political experience.

Joe Cerrell>> Weaknesses would be two years in the United States Senate, but again, there'll be those who say, "Oh, he's not one of those tired old politicians."

Kerman Maddox>> He's going to have to figure out a way to convince people that it's about judgment more than experience, but that is something that could be his Achilles Heel.

Barack Obama>> "Now I think that when you listen to the pundits and the commentators, most of them will tell you, "You know, Obama is saying some interesting things and he can give a pretty good speech and he's got enormous potential, but let's face it, he's only been on the national scene for a few years and we need him to wait. We need him to hold on." And let me tell you something. Let me tell you something. It's true that I've only been in Washington for a little while, but I've been in Washington long enough to know it needs to change. I know that."

Roger Cooper>> What you don't see here are the Hollywood-hosted fundraisers including one at the Beverly Hilton that cost two thousand three hundred dollars per person. Just that one event could mean a million dollars for Obama's campaign.

Joe Cerrell>> There's a lot of money in the Hollywood community. It was very solid for Bill Clinton.

Kerman Maddox>> A number of major fundraisers or financial players who historically backed Bill Clinton have cut ties with Hillary and are raising substantial sums of money for Barack Obama.

Roger Cooper>> But some in Hollywood are hedging their bets, giving to both Obama and Hillary Clinton.

Joe Cerrell>> There's nothing hypocritically wrong with saying, you know, whomever the party chooses, I'll go with them. I'm going to help them both in the primary.

Barack Obama>> "Most of all, we see a war that should have never been authorized and should have never been waged."

Roger Cooper>> Some supporters who came to see Barack Obama in person liked what they saw.

Lori Kashefinejad>> Oh, he's amazing. Just absolutely incredible.

Roger Cooper>> Why?

Lori Kashefinejad>> There's so much hope that I get from him for this country that's just been a nightmare the last six or seven years. It's exciting to see someone who's for that kind of change.

Juanita Wood>> Hey, he's the next president. I'm sorry, Hillary. I love you, but he's here. He's the man. He's going to help us out. Health care, everything. He had all the issues covered.

Roger Cooper>> Some pundits have suggested that Obama's mixed race -- his father is black, his mother white -- may cost him votes among some African Americans who might see him as not black enough. Not so, says Kerman Maddox.

Kerman Maddox>> Because, other than a few jealous African American politicians who envy his rock star status, people that he has catapulted over to become the guy, I don't hear from any African Americans about the issue of his blackness or nobody questions his blackness.

Juanita Wood>> Is he black enough? Am I black enough? Oh, yeah, he's black enough. You know, his father is from Africa, his mother is white from Kansas. He's black enough definitely.

Barack Obama>> "Bend it in the direction of peace instead of war. Bend it in the direction of health care for all. Bend it in the direction for educational opportunities. Bend it in the direction of justice. Bend it in the direction of equality. If you do that, then I'm not only confident that I will be your next president. I am confident that we're going to have an entirely new and better America. Thank you, Los Angeles. I love you. Thank you."

Roger Cooper>> Joe Cerrell says an important test for Obama, how thick his skin is, will come later when opponents start to hurl accusations at him.

Joe Cerrell>> They will be finding every little -- not dirt, just even dust. It's fair, though. I mean, if you want to play in the big leagues, then you've got to be prepared to, you know, get hit by the pitcher.

Kerman Maddox>> This is a tough business. It's not for the faint at heart. We will see. Again, he has been treated like a rock star. Once they start to criticize him and go after him, it's going to be interesting to see how he responds to that. But so far, he seems to be, as my dad says, as cool as the other side of the pillow, so I think he's going to be okay.

Roger Cooper>> What did you think?

Amanda Tores>> Oh, I thought it was totally awesome. We came out today. It's cool. We totally loved it. We're voting next year. We're seventeen and eighteen, so we're really hyped.

Melissa Sala>> He's the next president for sure.

Roger Cooper>> The presidential election is more than a year and a half away, but with California's primary likely to be moved up, we can expect to see Obama, Hillary and all the candidates make California a constant stop on the campaign trail. In Crenshaw, I'm Roger Cooper for Life and Times.

Val Zavala>> So what do you think of Barack Obama? You can post your opinion on our blog. Just go to kcet.org and click on the Life and Times Blog.

Announcer>> Kcet.org is the place to look for the very latest on Life and Times. You'll find previews of upcoming stories, plus transcripts and audio of past episodes and links to some of our most interesting features. Just go to kcet.org, scroll down the page and click on "Life and Times".

Val Zavala>> Downtown Los Angeles is getting a two billion dollar remodeling, including a luxury hotel, condos, some affordable housing and a park. So what should you care if you don't live downtown? Well, critics say that developers have gotten a sweetheart deal courtesy of you, the taxpayers.

The Grand Avenue Project will be the largest single development project in Los Angeles history stretching from the Music Center to City Hall. It will include five high-rise residential towers, two designed by Frank Gehry. Twenty percent of it will be affordable housing. It will include a five-star hotel, restaurant, sports club and other retail. And finally, there will be a sixteen acre park.

Los Angeles County Supervisor, Mike Antonovich, cast the sole vote against the massive project. He objects to as much as ninety-six million dollars in public subsidies and tax breaks to the developer. The developer, Related Companies, is also getting a ninety-nine year lease on public land. I talked with Antonovich's Deputy, Paul Novak, about his boss's opposition.

Paul Novak>> What you're talking about is money that isn't being used to fix roads, isn't being used to shore up the county's mental health system or health system and isn't being used to keep our parks open, our libraries open or other facilities up and running. That's been the concern of Supervisor Antonovich from day one.

The concern that the supervisor has is that the risk is largely being taken on this project by the taxpayers as opposed to being taken by the developer. Some of the returns on the project by the developer's own consultant's market studies shows that the returns are as low as six and a half percent. Well, you and I --

Val Zavala>> -- they're not going to make a lot of money out of this.

Paul Novak>> Exactly. You and I know, at six and a half percent, I can probably get that at a bank on a long-term Treasury Bill. So what they do is, they take the subsidy from the county. It inflates the profit on the project which then allows them to go out and attract private sector capital.

Val Zavala>> So basically, taxpayers are providing the developers with a guaranteed profit.

Paul Novak>> The taxpayers are enhancing the developer's ability to make a profit which they otherwise might not be able to make.

Val Zavala>> Carol Schatz strongly disagrees. She is President of the Central City Association. She says the Grand Avenue Project is a turning point for downtown, a perfect example of smart growth, and that public monies are not assuring that developers make their profit.

Carol Schatz>> There's no guarantee. Even with the little bit of money that the county is providing and the tax revenues that are going back into the project, not into the developer's pocket, but back into the project, there's no guarantee. The two billion dollars of this three-phase project is coming from nowhere else but the developer. The county is only providing a tiny little sliver of actual money to the project, which is about $4.3 million dollars of over a two billion dollar project. That's nothing. That's absolutely nothing.

Paul Novak>> There is nothing that precludes the developer. In fact, Supervisor Antonovich expects the developer to come in on the later phases, Phase Two and Three, and ask for additional subsidies.

On top of that, there's an additional concern which is that, if there are escalating costs -- and as you know, a skyscraper is primarily concrete and steel which has faced massive cost increases over the past few years -- the developer could come back even during Phase One and ask for more money, at which point the county and the city would be in a very difficult position of whether or not to provide the additional subsidies on a project that might be half-built.

Carol Schatz>> That's speculation and we don't know that that is going to take place and the city and county have two options. They can yes or no, but that presumes that that kind of request will come forward. I think that's a presumption that I find very speculative at this point in time because this is, after all, not a local small developer who really would be absolutely lost without, you know, an additional subsidy. This is a huge nationally recognized, very well-funded developer.

Paul Novak>> Well, none of our constituents or none of Supervisor Antonovich's constituents in Santa Clarita or in Antelope Valley or out in the eastern San Gabriel Valley really had an opportunity to learn about this project or voice their concerns to their elected officials.

Val Zavala>> I understand that there's a hiring preference too, geographically?

Paul Novak>> There is a hiring preference for fourteen of the hundred-plus zoning codes. We have about a hundred zip codes in Los Angeles County. Fourteen of those are in the downtown area. Residents of those areas get a hiring preference. If you had a contractor in, say, Santa Clarita and he or she wanted to work on the Grand Avenue Project, not only are they subsidizing the project, but they would be second in line to work on the project.

That was something that was very much of concern to the supervisor, as he feels he represents a great part of the county and those people should have a fair shake at the contracts.

Carol Schatz>> It's going to create thirty thousand more jobs. It's going to create a hundred million dollars in tax revenue. It's spread out in every neighborhood of the county and the city. It is going to create a place for people to come and celebrate the heart of the city and their center. It's going to house low-income people. It's going to house affluent people. It's going to serve, bolster and support the county's investment in the Walt Disney Concert Hall and the Music Center and its environs. So this is a win-win for everyone and every dollar that gets generated in downtown Los Angeles gets spread out all over this county.

What the county apparently has forgotten -- not the county, but unfortunately, Supervisor Antonovich has forgotten -- is that the county has already reaped enormous benefits from the downtown renaissance that's been taking place since the end of 1999.

Paul Novak>> I think a lot of elected officials and other downtown supporters are concerned that these lands have been under-utilized for years and that's a concern that Supervisor Antonovich has. Having said that, the land could have been sold as we had indicated and you would have had a development project on those properties. It could have been done entirely with private capital and at the developer's risk.

If the county had sold off those properties, we could have done the park, we could have spent the fifty million on it, and we would have had another forty-plus million dollars to work on providing affordable housing or fixing potholes or working on expanding our health care system and keeping our parks and libraries open. So at the end of the day, you could have had both rather than having this just be an either-or alternative.

Carol Schatz>> There are many communities who would not want this project at all, especially in the Valley. They don't want the density of this project. This is going to be two high-rise towers of housing and a hotel. You try to build that anywhere in the Valley, the neighborhood groups would go insane. It belongs downtown where we embrace the density. We have said long ago that, if you build the heart of the city up, the benefits of that will extend to every neighborhood not just around the downtown, but to even the most far-flung outlying communities and that's exactly what's happening.

Val Zavala>> For more information, you can go to the website of grandavenuecommittee.org. Groundbreaking will be in October of this year. The entire project, all three phases, is scheduled to be completed by 2018.

Announcer>> To send a comment or a question to our program, you can reach us by mail at this address:

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Larry Mantle>> Welcome to FilmWeek on Life and Times. I'm Larry Mantle of 89.3 KPCC. Our first movie this week is "Amazing Grace". It tells the story of a member of Parliament who, during slavery's heyday, attempts to bring an end to the practice. The movie is directed by Michael Apted.

[Film Clip]

Larry Mantle>> I'm joined this week by critics Peter Rainer of the Christian Science Monitor and Jean Oppenheimer of Village Voice Media. "Amazing Grace", Peter?

Peter Rainer>> Well, this is a movie that's very heartfelt and means very well. It's a bio pick, not my favorite genre. William Wilberforce played by loan Gruffudd, who's a Scottish actor, who is an abolitionist who's trying in the Parliament to end the slave trade in the British colonies and in England and is having a rather difficult time of it.

It shows you his resoluteness and his, you know, faith and all of these wonderful things that he does, but somehow you feel like you're watching one of these kind of glorified high school pageant plays where everybody is in wigs declaiming and people are booing and all sorts of revelatory side glances and things.

It all kind of seems patently phony to me. The only character that really has any life force in this movie was Albert Finney who plays the former slave trader who wrote the song "Amazing Grace", but he's not in the movie for very long.

Larry Mantle>> What did you think, Jean?

Jean Oppenheimer>> Well, the film does wear its heart on its sleeve, but I think that for viewers who really can get past any sort of cynicism about the moral values that it's talking about in its great sincerity, I think that they will actually very much like the film. As for all the booing that Peter is talking about, a good part of it takes place in the British Parliament. If anybody who has watched any of the British Parliament on C-SPAN or whatever, that's really how they act towards one another.

Larry Mantle>> Quite entertaining.

Jean Oppenheimer>> Quite entertaining. I think that the film is quite inspiring. In a sense, it's somewhat contemporary. You can relate to it in a contemporary way because it's really about these two young men, Wilberforce and William Pitt, who was his best friend and then became Prime Minister, who really thought that they could change the evils of the world and try to do that and that's inspiring.

Larry Mantle>> The romantic comedy, "Gray Matters", stars Heather Graham and Tom Cavanagh in a film written and directed by Sue Kramer.

[Film Clip]

Larry Mantle>> Jean, what did you think of "Gray Matters"?

Jean Oppenheimer>> "Gray Matters" is so shallow and so sitcom that it defies credulity. This film, in terms of its premise and story, is somewhat similar to last week's film. In this one, Heather Graham plays a young woman and she and her brother, played by Tom Cavanagh, are very, very close, so close that everybody thinks they're dating. So they realize that they sort of have to go out in the world and meet other people. The first woman that they meet, the Cavanagh character falls in love with and asks her to marry him.

The problem is, it turns out that Heather Graham has begun to realize that she is possibly a lesbian and she falls in love now with her brother's fianc� and then wife, which runs into all sorts of complications. You know, it's not the subject matter. It was just so poorly handled. It was so slippery, so shallow, so sitcom. It was a great disappointment.

Larry Mantle>> Peter?

Peter Rainer>> Yeah, this is a very silly movie and not in a really positive way either. It just kind of --

Larry Mantle>> -- because you like silly good movies.

Peter Rainer>> I like silly, I like disgusting comedies, I like all sorts of -- you know, "Dumb and Dumber" is one of my favorite films. But this is like really dumb (laughter). Heather Graham is, you know, a charming actress. She hasn't been in a whole lot of good movies and there are a few that I've seen that haven't been released yet that aren't terribly good either. One was at Sundance. She really needs a vehicle where she can be more than just an ornament in, you know, a sitcom that wasn't picked up, which essentially is what this looks like.

Larry Mantle>> Our final film this week is the documentary, "Ghosts of Abu Ghraib". It premiers tonight on HBO and will be shown a number of more times on the pay cable service. The film is directed by Rory Kennedy and it tells the story of what happened behind the scenes not just to the victims of, but those who took part in, the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib.

[Film Clip]

Larry Mantle>> "Ghosts of Abu Ghraib", Peter?

Peter Rainer>> This is a terrific documentary by Rory Kennedy who's made quite a few, including "American Hollow". This is an examination of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal and really how it came about from a kind of psychological context. The film begins with old newsreels of a psychological experiment that was performed at Yale, I believe, in the 1950s about how far people will go if an authority figure tells them to submit an electric shock to someone who isn't in fact receiving it, but the person delivering the shock believes that they are.

That is used as the kind of template for what happened in Abu Ghraib and many of the military people who were there who administered, you know, the tortures and so forth are interviewed about what they did. In many cases, it's as if a fever had passed over them and had, you know, lifted and they weren't really entirely on top of why they did what they did. There's some amazing footage in this film that hasn't been seen before.

Larry Mantle>> Jean?

Jean Oppenheimer>> This is a very graphic film and very tough to watch. There have been some fine films out about Iraq and the American involvement in Iraq and this is one of the most exceptional. One of the things that I felt worked so well here is that Rory Kennedy is really trying to find out, as Peter said, how did these things happen? How did these American men and women soldiers do these terrible things?

What's interesting is that they have the actual people who went to prison. They have interviews with a number of the other soldiers who witnessed what went on. Surprisingly, they have interviews with some of the Iraqis who were actually tortured. I've never seen this anywhere else. It's not so much that she really goes through explaining why this happened because even the participants did not know. As Peter said, it's book-ended by the experiment conducted by the social scientists at Yale.

Larry Mantle>> That's it for FilmWeek on Life and Times. I'm Larry Mantle of 89.3 KPCC joined by critics Peter Rainer of the Christian Science Monitor and Jean Oppenheimer of Village Voice Media. Please join us again next week for the next FilmWeek on Life and Times.

Val Zavala>> KPCC broadcasts the hour version of FilmWeek on Fridays at eleven a.m. And that's our program. I'm Val Zavala. For everyone at Life and Times, thanks for watching. We'll see you next time.

Announcer>> Life and Times was made possible through the generous support of the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of medicine, health, science and education.

And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg.

Sponsored in part by:


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